Microsoft Teams: Streamlining Collaboration & Communication
Effectively collaborating and communicating with co-workers while working remotely was one of the biggest issues organizations and employees had to deal with in the past couple of years.
Balancing home life while working from home can be a difficult task, especially if the entire team needs to communicate quickly to meet specific deadlines.
With remote work becoming the “new norm” for now, how can a business thrive while dealing with a flood of important emails?
Microsoft Teams has made it simpler and easier to connect with co-workers and enjoy deeper collaboration with a powerful roster of tools. Whether you’re in the comfort of your own home or on the go, Teams can connect everyone no matter where they are in the world.
With over 330,000 companies worldwide using the cloud-based software, Microsoft Teams has become the fastest growing app in Microsoft’s history.
What is Microsoft Teams?
Microsoft Teams is a streamlined chat-based collaboration platform.
In other words, it’s an app for businesses where groups of employees can communicate through chat, private messages, and videophone via real-time collaboration. All in one convenient place!
Microsoft Teams was developed to replace Microsoft’s “Skype for Business” to allow improved communication and collaboration between employees.
Skype was limited to instant messaging and online meetings. With Microsoft Teams, employees can easily store, share, and edit data in real-time. Staff members can also collaborate on images or documents with ease. Even better, Teams can also record and transcribe audio from meetings and share screens, making meetings seamless and uncomplicated.
Basically, Microsoft Teams reduces the constant flood of emails employees receive and replaces them with an instant messaging system with many options to personalize the experience. Employees, managers and owners can choose which device they’ll use most, to make it simple to stay in touch whether they’re in the office, on the road, or working from home. They can also set their availability status to notify others when they’re out of the office, out to lunch, in a meeting and more.
How Does Microsoft Teams Work?
Microsoft Teams is part of Microsoft 365 included with licensed plans:
- Business Basic
- Business Standard
- Business Premium
- Business Enterprise Plans
Microsoft Teams is available on all platforms such as Mac, PC, and mobile. It can be accessed anytime through a desktop app, browser, or mobile app for smartphones and tablets of many different makes and models.
Once set up, a manager or team administrator can send an invitation or URL to employees.
They can set up various channels (also known as topics of conversation) within the team where they can communicate business matters all in one place.
More than just a chat, you can share a file, audio call, video call, or schedule a meeting without leaving the chat. Chat’s integration with other Microsoft products such as OneNote, OneDrive, Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and Office, means no more switching between multiple apps. You can discuss the latest project with your colleague all in one convenient window.
You can send memes or funny gifs, which helps create a team-building atmosphere instead of a stuffy “all business” type of approach.
If you do end up missing a message or conversation, no problem! You can easily catch up on communications by viewing the team chat history or receive email summaries of any conversations you missed.
Benefits of Using Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams enables seamlessly fast communication and collaboration between team members, regardless of where they are in the world.
There’s no more switching apps and having to remember how to use each platform. You can create Word, Excel, or PowerPoint documents directly in Teams, and immediately share them with team members. It’s a seamless meeting experience.
As soon as you create a meeting, you can share files that need to be reviewed, and keep track of meeting notes. Once the meeting is over, the recording of the audio or video call is available in the same tab. So if you missed the meeting, the recording, meeting notes, and agreed-upon actions are all in one place. It’s also simple to set your availability status, just in case you need to step out before or during a meeting.
Microsoft 365 Business Voice, which is an add-on to Teams, can completely replace your organization’s existing phone system.
This comes fully loaded with important commercial phone system features such as:
- Auto-attendant
- Extension dialing
- Conferencing
- Call queues
- Voicemail
- Call centre integration
A library of over 800+ in-house apps are expertly designed to seamlessly integrate into your daily duties, so you can focus on your work, not multiple third-party apps.
Benefits of using Microsoft Teams, it will:
- Improve communication
- Help build healthy workplace relationships
- Save time and money
- Streamline collaboration
- Improve efficiency
- Increase productivity
- Make scheduling meetings easier
- Create consistent and accurate records
- Enable live events
Finally, Microsoft Teams offers safe and secure protection with built-in data loss prevention which will cover files, chats and content.
You can manage who can take control of the screen, who can record the meetings, and who can access the recordings at all times.
Why Use Microsoft Teams?
Having a streamlined workspace is essential to creating exceptional work. By utilizing Microsoft Teams, you can focus on important creative decisions and easily communicate with other team members.
Creating a user-friendly experience helps promote a healthy work environment between remote employees and companies.
You can worry less about emails, by having a more enjoyable user experience with Teams. After all, a quality user experience is one you shouldn’t have to think about while working.
Microsoft Teams makes important work much easier to achieve, especially for small to medium-sized businesses.
Experience Seamless Microsoft Teams Deployment and Maintenance With BSC Solutions Group Ltd.
Ultimately, Microsoft Teams will help your team members effectively manage workloads.
It achieves this by securely sharing important files and hosting interactive and engaging webinars.
By seamlessly connecting various language barriers across the world, communication and collaboration have never been easier.
At BSC Solutions Group Ltd., we provide Microsoft 365 licensing, migration services, and full IT support.
Our experts will create and implement your Microsoft 365 Migration Plan by providing full training and ongoing tech support for your team during the entire process. We also offer a comprehensive service plan for your workplace.
Ask us about migrating your company over to Microsoft 365 and implementing Microsoft Teams. Contact us today to learn more and get started!
